Data Collection

Different channels were used to receive maximize the response rate from startups. Be- ing aware of the low response rates from online-surveys for startup founders, a multi- pronged approach was used. First, the social media sites of communities such as the German Startup Association, Silicon Allee, etventure Startup Hub and START Berlin were used to create the awareness for this research. Second, the personal network of the author helped to connect to startup founders in co-working spaces and accelerators such as Axel Springer Plug and Play, Innogy, Betahaus, wework, ahoy, rainmaking loft and startupbootcamp. Third, suitable startups were identified through online databases such as Tracxn, a large data platform of startups globally, and local lists such as found on Gründerszene and from the German Startup Association. Finally, referrals via snowball sampling by the personal contacts of the author were used.

Landing pages were created to collect potential research candidates even before the sur- vey was ready for distribution. While constructing the research instrument, a first land- ing page had been launched to collect first respondents email addresses to contact them as soon as the survey was pretested, created an online survey and ready to be sent to them.

As illustrated in Appendix 4, the topic of the research was on purpose kept a little bit hidden on the landing page. New digital products development was addressed instead of Lean Startup to avoid a biased selection effect of the lean startup affine ventures and to exclude those ventures not aware of the term. Nevertheless, still measuring the applica- tion of lean startup principles in a project. The first landing page didn’t show the wished conversion rate for survey participants. Following a lean startup approach also the land- ing page was iterated based on feedback from founders. A clearer communication what should be done after signing up, such as indicating the time needed for the survey in- stead of the quite general and unspecific description. The 2nd version of the landing page is visible in Appendix 5 and had a higher conversion rate. Nevertheless, although this conversion rate was slightly higher with 20%, a different strategy had to be taken into consideration.

The low conversation rate required a pivot in the data collection strategy. The conversa- tion with one founder made it clear by saying “I'd highly recommend you attend the networking events hosted by co-working spaces and ask the leaders to share your info or give you a slot to talk about it. They are usually quite kind and helpful”. In conse- quence, based on this insight the acquisition strategy was changed. The assumption that a landing page shared via email and social media would be enough to attract the atten- tion of 100 startup founders had to be invalidated, after measuring its conversion rate. This insight from this small test showed clearly that the data collection needs a combi- nation of online and offline channels.

An online survey was created and distributed. The survey was created with an online survey tool such as surveymonkey.com to automate the capture and input of data and allowing fast iterations during the creation phase. The Survey Monkey questionnaire was sent online in a personalized way via Email or LinkedIn to the founders in the sam- ple. The cover page of the survey illustrated the research aim and its importance. Startup founders face a lot of visibility and pressure from their investors which restricts them in the willingness to participate in such research. It was essential to find the right incen- tives to increase the return rate. Full confidentiality was assured and just necessary in- formation such as founding year, the category of digital products and services, their business sector (B2B, B2C, both) was requested to overcome this barrier. The name of the venture and the number of employees were not made compulsive, information which could help to identify the venture. However, the return rates were still not enough.

Higher return rates were achieved by following the Total Design Method and the role of incentives. The data collection followed the Total Design Method (TDM) (Dillman, 1978) to maximize the return rates. The initial TDM approach has the goal to incentiv- ize the participation in a survey by a following social exchange approach to create trust and perceived higher rewards and lower costs for the respondent. The TDM was updat- ed over the decades with the new technical possibilities from mailing and phone inter- view towards email and online tools (Dillman et al., 2008). Follow-up emails, phone calls, personal visits followed the initial survey distribution to obtain higher response rates. The role of incentives had to be taken into consideration. Therefore, upon comple- tion of the study, it was promised to provide the findings to the participating founders. Additionally, other non-monetary benefits considered attractive out of a founder’s per-

spective were provided, such as winning tickets for the Startup Camp Berlin 2018, the chance to speak at the authors curated lean startup track or a free of charge job posting to find motivated working students and interns.

Data of 100 participants was collected with a mix of online and offline collection strate- gies. The data collection started with using digital touchpoints in the form of a landing page, email message or request in LinkedIn. This strategy was supported by offline touchpoints such as visiting and talking to founders. Preventing from technical issues with self-administered internet-based surveys and enable a customer development situa- tion such as in the lean startup way following the get out of the building claim (Blank & Dorf, 2012), meeting the founders in their co-working spaces, offices. Thus, filling out a questionnaire during a personal meeting ensured the common understanding of the items and collecting filled out surveys. This strategy supported the efforts to find suita- ble survey participants showing a higher perceived social exchange which resulted in more available time and willingness to fill out the survey. On the one hand, the personal visits required more time than self-administered only based surveys, but on the other hand, there was an expected higher return rate of completed surveys (Saunders, 2009). Therefore, adding to the online touchpoints also offline ones such as visiting different startup events, pitching at meetups, co-working spaces, incubators and accelerators helped to collect the required 100 filled out surveys.